Harbinger

In the Oscar post-mortem, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the triumph of Crash is just another stretch on the road to the feature film business turning into the DVD business.

For at least the past three months you couldn't find Crash playing in a movie theater in Los Angeles. The same thing happened last year with Ray, where it was only playing in one really bad theater but landed a Best Picture nomination and Best Actor win. So at the time when dutiful folks like me wanted to catch all the Best Picture nominees in the Big Screen, the way God intended, no dice.

Meanwhile, Lion's Gate, Crash's distributor, continuously ran full-page ads for Crash in the Los Angeles Times, even evolving the killer tagline, "Remember how it made you feel?" Like way back in mid-2005 when you first saw it in the theater, if you happened to do so at the time. And the ad began to feature the DVD symbol, as that product hit the shelves.

But what Lion's Gate did most effectively (as pioneered by Miramax) was to plaster all the Academy and Guild members with screeners, those DVDs that insiders love getting at the end of the year and sorting through for their permanent collections.

As more and more pictures are nominated and even voted to win based on home screeners, the growth of this practive parallels the shrinking window between theatrical and DVD release dates. Since you couldn't see Crash in the theater at voting time (there were a handful of late-scheduled AMPAS member-only screenings, but they couldn't have been significant) one can only conclude that Crash got it's winning percentage from home viewers of the movie.

Which plays entirely to Crash's advantage -- and against Brokeback Mountain.

I've often said that Best Picture is a misnomer, that the Oscar actually goes to Most Picture. That means the movie with the strongest combination of striking visual imagery AND powerful emotion. A movie like Lawrence of Arabia has epic grandeur (visual) and a tragic personal story of how history shapes the man as much as man shapes history (gut emotion).

In a year without a visually overwhelming movie that also pulls out the emotional stops, a smaller movie can win, provided it delivers big emotions. The classic example is Marty, a small-person character piece adapted from a television play that won Best Picture against a slew of lesser, although generally bigger movies -- check if you must. It happened last year with Million Dollar Baby, where the smaller movie beat The Aviator, which didn't provide, perhaps, the right kind of emotion to win.

From all accounts -- and I'll confirm shortly when I get to see it in the theater, as I'd prefer -- Brokeback Mountain has those big Western vistas and subtle emotional moments that work best in a large darkened theater, less well on the small screen. (My friend with all the screeners was overhyped and underwhelmed watching it on her TV.) On the big screen movies can work their mood to greatest effect. On the TV screen we respond best to incident and faces (preferably in close-up or medium close-up). Crash had a plethora of both. They are the building blocks of Crash, and on their limited budget it was a very wise creative choice.

There's also enough big emotion in Crash to fill in for the win. Whether you found those big moments contrived or earned is where you come down on the film. But it is the classic small film winner in a weak year, and by weak I mean no overwhelming visual/emotional blockbuster like The Godfather or The Return of the King. Weak by Oscar standards, where all the members are looking for, please oh please, is Most Picture.

So is this the end of the movie era, where the big screen got filled by big pictures as well as big ideas and big emotions, where big spaces yielded big returns and viewer felt the moviegoing experience made them feel, well, bigger than when they came in?

Is Crash the latest, most convincing harbinger?